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Wrapping up one year while trying to plan ahead for the next can be overwhelming even under the best of circumstances. In the case of 2021, when 40% of US households are facing serious financial problems due to the COVID-19 pandemic, finishing the year strong and planning for 2022 may seem even more difficult.
One of the best ways to ensure your business is ending this year on the right foot and setting yourself and your team up for success next year is to stay organized with an end-of-year checklist. To make sure you continue to support your team in 2022, it's important to ensure you include a few specific tasks related to the disaster relief fund in your year-end checklist.
END-OF-YEAR RELIEF FUND CHECKLIST
As you prepare for the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, including a few action items on your year-end checklist related to the relief fund you have established will serve you well. Looking over yearly fund data for trends, sharing success stories with your team, and planning out your 2022 strategy for engagement and communication are three fairly simple tasks you can undertake to set the fund up for a successful new year.
1. Analyze Overall Fund Data and Analytics for the Year
One of the most important things to include when making an end-of-year checklist is analyzing fund data and analytics for the year. It's helpful to take a holistic view of the year in order to observe any changes you may have missed throughout the year as well as take note of any overarching trends that could inform your strategy for 2022. When analyzing this data you should pay special attention to two specific metrics: applicant behavior and donation vs. grant volume.
Applicant behavior involves the volume of applications you received throughout the year. Due to pandemic-related hardships, it's possible that you received higher engagement than expected over the course of 2021. If this is the case, you may need to reassess the criteria you use to determine grant eligibility.
On the other hand, if you happened to overestimate the number of applicants and engagement was lower than expected, you may need to plan for new or altered engagement campaigns for 2022.
Donation and grant volume is another metric you'll want to consider as you wrap up 2021 and begin to analyze overall fund data from the year. Year-end totals for donations and grants can be used to help you determine whether changes will need to be made to balance expected grants with expected donations in 2022. If a boost in donations seems necessary to offset an increase in grants, consider offering payroll deduction if you don't already do so.
2. Share 2021 Successes
One of the best ways to finish out the year is to share any major successes from 2021. Wrapping up the year by sharing fund success sets a positive tone for your team as you move into 2022. Sharing success stories from the year can help to boost team morale and get everyone off to a great start in the new year. These successes could include donation amounts, application statistics, or any other highlights related to grants that stand out as important milestones from the year.
These types of successes are perfect to share through internal communication channels, not only to express gratitude for any donations received, but also to remind team members about the fund and its benefits. Including grant recipient testimonials is a great way to highlight these benefits, and pointing team members toward the fund website for resources and FAQs can work as a bonus engagement campaign going into 2022.
3. Plan for 2022 Team Engagement and Communication
As you're sharing the fund's 2021 successes with your team, you may want to consider setting up more routine information sharing about the fund to highlight important information, resources, or milestones throughout the year.
Company-wide meetings or internal newsletters are the perfect avenues to share this type of information. Not only will this keep your team in the loop regarding the fund, but it will also keep the fund front and center year-round, boosting program awareness among your team and potentially increasing yearly donations to the fund.
If boosting program awareness is a specific goal for 2022, it may also serve you well to consider creating a fund oversight committee with cross-department representation to help increase program awareness and engagement throughout your organization.
ADVANTAGES OF PARTNERING WITH EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOUNDATION
From establishing the relief fund and identifying grant criteria to awarding grants and providing applicant support, Emergency Assistance Foundation is available to help you through the entire process. By streamlining the process between application submission and grant award, Emergency Assistance Foundation makes it easy to help your team in the unfortunate event of personal hardship or disaster.
These are all benefits Emergency Assistance Foundation provides year-round, but as you're drafting your 2022 program engagement strategy, it may be helpful to keep in mind some of the other resources Emergency Assistance Foundation can provide both you and your team as you wrap up 2021.
Real-Time Diagnostic Reporting: Listing potential emergencies and ranking them in regards to importance and likelihood is essential to knowing what to do and what resources to invest in. For instance, you might not need to spend money on hurricane planning if your facility is not near a coastal area, nor should you spend a lot of time planning for earthquakes if your facility is not located in an earthquake-susceptible region. However, this doesn't mean that you should totally ignore these risks. Rather, carry out a risk assessment to determine disasters that are likely to face you.
Fund Partner Portal Access for Additional Resources: Emergency Assistance Foundation Fund Partners also have access to our Fund Partner Portal, which includes resources that can be extremely helpful for 2021 year-end recaps as well as planning for 2022.
While working through your year-end checklist, you may need to look back over the course of 2021 for highlights and important milestones. The Communications Archive is a great resource included on the Fund Partner Portal which allows Partners to easily access past disaster alerts, updates, and other information sent to Fund Partners via email throughout the course of the year.
For future planning purposes, the Fund Partner Portal also includes a wealth of team member engagement resources that can help to raise awareness for and participation in the Fund. If part of your 2022 fund goal is to increase donations and/or application volume, the Fund Partner Portal is a great place to start building a strategy to reach those goals.
Dedicated Relief Fund Senior Advisor: Perhaps the most helpful resource throughout the course of establishing and maintaining a fund is that each Emergency Assistance Foundation Fund Partner is assigned a dedicated Relief Fund Senior Advisor to help guide you through the process. From onboarding to launch and beyond, your Relief Fund Senior Advisor will be able to answer questions, explain fund management best practices, and help set you up for long-term program success.
Relief Fund Senior Advisors are a valuable resource throughout the year, but can also be particularly helpful when analyzing overall fund data for the year and planning for the future as you complete your 2021 year-end checklist. For more information about how to hit the ground running in 2022 check out these tips for relief fund annual goal setting in the New Year.
If your company is interested in starting a relief fund, consider establishing a fund with Emergency Assistance Foundation today. By establishing a fund with us, your organization can assist members of your team affected by hardships and disasters and receive all of the advantages of partnering with us mentioned above. Relief fund grants can help impacted individuals pull through difficult times and start on the path toward recovery.
If you’d like to learn more about how your organization can help your team during difficult times, you can review additional information about how a fund works or contact us today. We look forward to helping you make a difference for those who need it most!
